Call Me Anthea
by eleanoralovesananias
Summary: "Anthea" is Greek for "flower." Mycroft doesn't know this. Nor does he know the true identity of his young secretary. If he did, he'd be livid. And Sherlock would laugh.
1. Chapter 1

"What's your name?" asked the short man, his forward-leaning stance all too obvious. His ears were quite prominent, and red-tipped, she noted. _He's just been kidnapped by a man with expansive and mysterious power and knowledge, and now he's thinking of me as an opportunity,_ she thought, slightly amused. Yet she had the distinct feeling that this small detail would be significant in the future. John Watson was an interesting character. She knew the cold kidney pie - sorry, Mr. Mycroft Holmes - would keep tabs on him, but she intended on keeping some of her own, and in her own way. For a brief moment, she even considered accepting his implied offer. No, that would simply not do, she decided. Her disguise was enough to fool Mycroft, who never gave her a second look, but if she spent time with this Watson, sooner or later she was bound to encounter Sherlock, and he would recognize her, if not immediately, then almost so. All this went through the young woman's head in a few seconds, while she appeared entirely absorbed by her phone screen.

The young woman paused. "Uh..." What should be her name? Mycroft had not asked for one yet, not in the two months she had been his secretary - her mouth twisted, _cold potato, how like him._ 'Ivy' was the first name that came to mind, but no, she used that one in communications - communications both Mycroft and Sherlock had mostly decoded. What, then? She had precious few others, and she doubted 'Sister of the Streets' would work in this situation. Another flower was the simplest solution. Lily, Jasmine, Violet? Rose? No, too easily traced back to her flower code. Wasn't _anthos_ Greek for 'flower'? Then how about...

"Uh, Anthea," she responded, pronouncing the name delicately, exactly as if she had never spoken it before.

"Is that your real name?" John Watson asked doubtfully.

"No."

He sighed. "Ok, then," the doctor snapped angrily, and exited the car.

Enola Holmes laughed slightly.


	2. Chapter 2

Enola told the driver to drop her off at a spot more that three miles from her flat. She didn't mind walking. In fact, the girl reflected as she clicked along in her heels, she quite enjoyed it. Long walks in London, while not as peaceful as a stroll in the woods of her beloved Ferndell, afforded her adequate time to think, stimulation enough to help with her yarn-basket snarl of a genius mind, and the anonymity of being just another bystander in a city of millions.

Except, she thought, wincing, in heels.

"Anthea" took the opportunity of the first alleyway she could find. She made absolutely sure there were no homeless sleeping in corners that she couldn't see at first - while a young woman undressing in an alleyway might be dismissed as "boring," Mycroft's _personal secretary_ doing the same certainly would not. If he even knew Mycroft had a personal secretary. If he still bothered to keep an eye out for her, after all these years. She'd run away at eleven, after all, and was now sixteen. Maybe he'd forgotten all about her. Tears unexpectedly welled up in her eyes. Her mother's voice floated through her ears as if she were actually standing there next to her daughter.

 _You'll do very well on your own, Enola._

She pulled off her heels, professional-looking black blazer, and slacks, stripping down to her underwear. She pressed against the wall of the alley, shielded by an overfilled Dumpster from all prying eyes. Still, she couldn't help blushing deeply at the thought of someone seeing her. Maybe even her own brother, Sherlock, seeing her. Would he blush? Blushing seemed so out of character for him, but possibly. Maybe he would.

Fucking Jesus! What the hell had made her think of that? Her shock at where her thoughts had wandered put a stop to them. She told herself firmly to focus on what she was doing.

So she folded up her secretary's clothes and put them carefully in her black purse. Then she pulled out a huge red purse that had been tightly folded up inside the smaller black one and stuffed said black purse inside the red one. She produced an overly red lipstick from her cleavage and smeared it on to match the purse, making sure to extend the neat line of the lipstick just past the actual end of her lips, so that it looked overdone but not ridiculous. She applied heavy mascara and blush, making sure it was obvious.

From her red purse she pulled out a large, boxy red jacket that was just slightly too big for her in the shoulders, and slipped one of her handy cardboard inserts into each shoulder so that she looked bulkier than she actually was, and pulled out the hip pads she wore while being "Anthea" to reveal her normal rather straight figure - but she kept in the heavy padding in her bra and the other methods she used to fake cleavage. The combined effect of the broad shoulders, masculine hips, and big boobs gave her a blocky, bold look.

She changed into bright red running shoes and skinny jeans, then added a few last touches, including using gel to make her hair spikier and finally a pair of red sunglasses.

The woman who stepped out of the alleyway was not Anthea at all, but an energetic, fashion-conscious, over-the-top but still quite attractive young woman. Enola bounced a few times on the balls of her feet and flashed a brilliant, toothy smile, trying out the character.

She grinned and strode on down the street. The disguises she created, especially the attractive ones, were not just clothing and makeup devices to her. They were ways of hiding from herself, of the knowledge that she was, for all her genius, an extremely plain and antisocial stick of a girl who spent her free time climbing trees and reading. As a curvy, fashionable, vivacious woman, even if it was only a disguise, she felt more confident.

Her flat was in a poor neighborhood - not a hellhole, but nowhere tourists with cameras were likely to be and certainly no place Mr. Mycroft Holmes would ever set foot in. She was less worried about Sherlock, even though he stood a better chance of finding her, but she still stayed away from the really bad neighborhoods - because that was exactly where he would be. Among drug addicts and criminals. She sometimes felt trapped in her choice of living space, having to steer clear of both Mycroft's upper-class areas and the slums Sherlock frequented. So she had chosen the most nondescript place possible. It was a little place, with a tiny café on the ground floor that could seat about ten people, max. The landlady, Mrs. Tupper, was mostly deaf - she could hear relatively well in the daytime, but at night, when she took out her hearing aid, thirty elephants could trample through the room and she wouldn't notice. This made the little flat perfectly suited to Enola's needs.

Enola, still in her spiky red disguise, stepped into the cafe as if just dropping in and purchased a muffin from the young man at the counter of the café, adding for character a flirtatious wink and grin. His eyes followed her appreciatively as she left the shop and appeared to continue on her way. Once out of sight, she slipped around back and stood back, scanning the back wall of the building. Finally choosing a route, she stuffed the muffin in her purse and jumped on top of the garbage bins.

The sixteen-year-old girl climbed quickly and easily up the sheer wall, making use of cracks in the mortar, pipes running along the wall, and decorative brick patterns, to reach the balcony of her particular flat. She huffed as she pulled herself over the railing, tumbling into her living room through the opened balcony door.

"Fuck," she complained. "All that for a muffin." Because, naturally, the clerks at the counter of the café were not to be trusted. A different woman couldn't be seen coming and going from the same flat every day. So if she wanted to get something at the cafe, she had to use the clandestine and cumbersome route she just had.

But they were really good muffins.


	3. Chapter 3

Enola sighed and put her hands behind her head, before remembering herself and reassuming the cross-legged, busy at paperwork, ever so slightly limp bearing of the secretary she was pretending to be. Anthea was Mycroft's perfectly docile, well-organized, loyal woman who attracted no attention and remembered only what she was supposed to, the perfect woman for Mycroft's professional needs. She disdained Anthea like she disdained her oldest brother, but she was a useful disguise.

Mycroft stiffly entered the room, his umbrella tapping, and she consciously unfocused her eyes. She was a doll, she reminded herself. Mindless, heartless if necessary, fully molded to her job.

Mycroft paid no attention to her. He was passing through when he got a call. Normally the eldest Holmes would never take a proffessional call with someone else in the room, but Anthea only just barely existed in his mind.

"How are we with Project Dante?"

A pause, then, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

Anthea started on the next form, let her eyes wander towards her phone as if impossibly bored.

"Nothing could be further from the truth!" There was a muted emotion in his voice that evoked what passed for him as shock. Enola's eyes widened, and it took all her considerable strength of will not to raise her head and stare, knowing that the slightest listening motion would get her unceremoniously fired, and probably found out. She checked her phone, keeping a bored expression on her face.

"I swear, I would never endanger the success of the experiment by bringing him in. You know I am nothing but loyal." The barest hint of desperation showed in his voice. "Perhaps we should talk about this in person."

Anthea looked at her phone again, to give herself an excuse to grin slightly. She was certain that she could eavesdrop on any conversation Mycroft had. She was beneath notice.

The eldest Holmes was about to stalk out of the room when his phone buzzed again. A noise of exasperation escaped him, which put Anthea on alert; that was the equivalent of howling and pulling out his hair for the cold potato. She would need to tread lightly.

He checked the caller ID and sighed, then put the phone to his ear. "What is it now, brother mine?"

Enola's heart skipped a beat.

"No, _Sherlock,_ I am not going to give you access to confidential government files."

Pause, presumably to listen to Sherlock whine, and then, "She did no such thing. You realize that the person you are speaking of heads one of the most important scientific teams the British Government has?"

Enola could just barely hear the high-pitched whine of a badly played violin through the phone. Mycroft growled and hung up. Anthea filed her finished paperwork, checked her phone, and started on the next batch.

A strange look passed across her older brother's face. Something like... incredulity, and... was that suspicion? "If she did," he muttered, "and if Sherlock found out, that would explain that call."

Mycroft looked around the room as if trying to remember something, then appeared to notice her. "You."

Anthea did not snap to attention like someone guilty of listening to a phone call, but rather let her eyes drift up until it seemed to register that she was being spoken to, then looked vaguely in Mycroft's direction, widening her eyes and ceasing to blink in order to cause her eyes to dilate, which she knew would make her appear more innocent. "Hmmm?"

"Put a tail on my brother, will you? I think I need to do a little investigation of my own."


	4. Chapter 5

Enola pulled out her high, spinning chair in her bathroom and sat down in front of the mirror.

The first thing she did was study her face. Her natural face had high, sharp cheekbones that instantly marked her as a Holmes. The first thing to do in any disguise was to get rid of those. She also had a pointed, prominent chin and and a heavy, hooked, aquiline nose - an odd combination in anyone, much less a sixteen-year-old girl. Her eyebrows were thin and arched, and her lips tight and narrow. Her skin was sallow, almost pallid, and smooth as a doll's. Her eyes were a dark, murky brown. All in all, she looked altogether too much like her brother.

Time to fix that.

Enola turned on the bright lights above the mirror, inspecting herself like a subject on a tray. She pulled her stage makeup kit out of the false bottom of the drawer without even looking, her eyes intent on her own face.

First, she had to erase those obnoxious cheekbones. She used small plastic inserts to fill in her cheeks, rounding them out and softening the lines of her face. Then she highlighted the newly born apples of her cheeks to further draw the eye away from her cheekbones, which she blurred with clever use of contouring. Her face already looked a good deal rounder.

She turned her attention to the nose. She used a carefully applied strip of putty to turn her hooked hose up into a snub nose. She added strips of putty crisscrossing over the bridge of her nose and smoothed out her Roman prominences, giving herself a flatter, almost Asian-looking nose. To make it look natural, she brushed a brownish pigment over the putty, blending it into her skin.

She considered herself, then added slightly bluish color to her upper and lower eyelids and puttied them out, making her eyes look narrower and puffy.

As a finishing touch, she added subtle browns to her face, making her look darker, and added scattered freckles and other blemishes along the most visible parts of her face.

Spinning from side to side in her chair, she was satisfied that even Sherlock wouldn't be able to recognize her.

* * *

Enola fidgeted nervously, sweating through her black T-shirt. She had decided on a baggy, unkempt look for "Leslie Ragostin," as she called her. More than unkempt: homeless. In a falling-apart backpack, she had stuffed a few blankets and a can or two of beans and corn, plus a can opener, to complete the feel.

She wore baggy, ripped jeans barely held up by a rope belt she had worked at to make look like it was fraying. A baggy black T-shirt showed one shoulder, revealing one strap of a green sports bra. The T-shirt displayed a skull and some logo she couldn't even read due to stylization overload. It was dirty, courtesy of a convenient mud puddle out back of her apartment. Her hair was ratty and frizzy, as well as darker than its usual muddy shade (thanks to some well-applied hair chalk.) She wore sneakers dirtied and cut up on the outside to make them look falling apart - but on the inside Enola had fitted a well-made liner with good arch and ankle support, knowing full well she might have to run.

The girl loitered in front of a shop, watching the building across the street: the shell which housed 221B Baker Street. The building was still, and she was still. She could wait.

She could wait.

She could wait.

Her fingers twitched.

She coughed, checked her watch, breathed. Breathed again. Deliberately.

Fingers twitched again. Foot unconsciously tapped.

 _Bored._

 _She gritted her teeth against a scream. She was never able to hold out long. Straps held her head back. She was crying silently. The therapist held her hand and looked at her sympathetically. "It's going to be OK," he whispered, squeezing her hand. "It won't hurt you. It's harmless. Just treatment." It didn't feel harmless. "Treatment" was a word she had grown to despise like a living enemy. She imagined herself punching at a laughing dummy dressed in scrubs. She hit him in the face. Treatment bounced back, smiling sweetly. BAM! Another shock tore her self-control open, and she screamed. Treatment 1, Enola 0. And, K.O._

Enola gasped. She'd slid into her mind library unintentionally. She could swear that thing had a life of its own. Especially when she got _B_ _ored,_ capital B, Treatment took hold. Treatment hated Bored. The yarn basket tangled again. Her mind was always trying to re-tangle the yarns she had just picked apart.

But it was okay. She would be fine. She just needed to stay calm, stay focused, and stave off Bored on one side and Treatment on the other, while completing her task and getting Anthea safely back to Mycroft. She could wait.


	5. Chapter 6

Enola Holmes watched, enthralled, as her brother Sherlock emerged from his flat. She was leaning against the building behind her, eyes half lidded, appearing to stare into the distance even as she kept a careful eye on him.

Her heart skipped a beat as he noticed her out of the corner of his eye. She momentarily looked away from him altogether, terrified that she would forget and break character if she met his eyes.

When she looked back, he had already turned away and was sweeping down the street. She broke her casual resting stance and trailed him down the sidewalk, already considering how to follow him without being noticed.

She wandered down the street, kicking her shoes at the sidewalk, dragging her feet, looking in windows, and generally doing anything but appearing to follow someone. Yet he would notice soon enough, she was sure. Already his pale eyes were trained on whatever reflective glass he passed, meaning he must be checking behind him. She was running out of time, and ideas.

Enola caught sight of a painter on a ladder. She was seized with an idea, and crossed the street in front of Sherlock, looking both ways, dodging a cab, and making sure he saw her. He visibly dismissed her, knowing that no sane tail would walk right in front of him like that.

Hiding a smile, she walked into an alley that branched off from the street. Watching him disappear from view, she ran at the wall, pushed up, and jumped. Grabbing hold of a pipe, she dangled from her arms, kicking frantically, scrabbling for a foothold. A young woman watched her wide-eyed from behind a Dumpster.

She was about to fall, and there was no foothold. With a titanic, last-ditch effort, she pulled herself up using only her arms and got her stomach onto the pipe. Wriggling desperately, acutely aware of her target disappearing into the distance, she balanced her stomach on the sharp pipe - giving herself a long stratch that beaded with blood - and grabbed the edge of the rooftop with both hands.

Straining her slender arms, she hauled herself up until she could put her elbows on the roof and balance one scraped knee on the pipe. Inch by inch, pull by pull, she gained the safety of the rooftops and lay there on her belly, exhausted.

There was no time to rest. She got her feet underneath her - somehow - and took off across the rooftops, racing her brother's black coat, watching him from above like some great bird.

The pale, hollow-eyed young woman, backpack clutched to her chest, watched Enola on her quest to follow the man who kept this young woman alive, and drew a quick sketch of her on the back of a receipt. Leslie Ragostin had been noticed.


End file.
